COMMENTS

30 second to boot

And not even Vista... what is wrong with it? Something that small should be like a ... well... palm nearly instant on. Wonder what will happen when the firmware OS / Vista combo is repackaged with something slim... U-boot to Linux?

Why does it even need Windows?

Solution for a problem which never existed

First impressions are along the lines of- my god- I've never before seen such a fingerprint magnet- its only out of the case 5 minutes and it looks like a 6 month old kid has been chewing on it.

On opening it- the keyboard is wonderful- the individual keys are punched through the chasis, and have lovely feedback.

The widescreen aspect is pretty useless- as pointed out in the video- its simply not useful.

Performance wise- I prefer the Samsung NC10, not least because of its battery life- but it just seems to tick the boxes in a way the Sony doesn't.

It looks like someone in Sony decided they had to differentiate their offering from that of rivals and set out to solve a problem that never existed in the first place. If you had to pick out a feature that sells this product- its the lovely keyboard- but its not a sufficient reason to shell out for this piece of eye candy.......

Making it a notebook

Hmm, if you'd get off that Windows Vista and install Linux instead, you have a fairly powerful notebook on which you can do serious work on. But with Vista you even need to hack open the box to get a browser by installing additional software packages like Firefox.

A Practically Aware Virtualised Concept with Real Physical Implications which I would inform One and All, is beyond the Ken of the Home Office/Foreign and Commonwealth Office/HMG because their Intelligence does not stretch beyond AIRevealing Ignorance and Arrogant Silence/Inelegant Disengagement , ..... which, of course is so typical of the Fullsome Novice in a Practising Fraud/Collapsing House of Cards built on Quicksands.

And with that Nugget of Information Shared, it will be more than just a little bit Interesting to Witness the Contortions of the Politically Inept and Bereft ,should they even Dare 42 Care and Act at All, for they have conclusively proved their actions, in the proxy actions of others whom they expect to control and lead, to be ill-conceived.

Sloth and/or any Apathetic Inaction/Pathetic Reaction , of course, always Allows the Game to Proceed Sweeping All away before IT, for an Assault on and a Sacking of the Citadel/Virtual Rape and Pillage of a Broken Capitalist Society System.

They will now be written out of the Leadership Game, as being Proven Unfit for Future Virtual Purpose, as will all others who would Abuse the Great Game and Support such Shallow Follies....... which may be Foreign NeoConservative Zionist Infiltrations ..... which in this Particular and Peculiar Case may be Vole/Mole Infestation under a Less than Prudent Blind Eye, Darling.

And where's the IT Angle, El Reg? Well, there are many, are there not? With some able to Use IT with Immunity and Impunity and other able to Report on ITs Use with Immunity and Impunity, for the Truth Disinfects All and removes the Parasite from its Succouring and Suckered Host ...... and a Touch of Military AId Discipline never does anyone Harm, who doesn't Thoroughly Deserve ITs Special Phorm of Intervention/Special Forces Attention.

And what did you do in the Gladio Wars, Daddy? Mum's the Word....."In silence I preserve freedom".

Prices start from £850

Not a netbook

I thought that it stated that Sony does not call this a netbook...

I have to say that I agree with Adam C on this one. If I had the cash I'd thing about buying it. The screen and keyboard make this machine for me - the lack of screen real estate is the biggest issue for the netbook for me (still got one and it's still very useful as a ulta portable machine).

Of course the better quality the screen the higher the price (you can get a 17" laptop with a 1440*900 screen for 700 euros, but if you want one with a decent screen in terms of res and view angle you pay a couple of K over that).

At 800 though is it a suitable proposition for the train - I brought the eee 1000 as it was useful to use on the way to and from work - if it's stolen on the train, gutted as I will be, it was still only 400 euros. 800 pounds is a lot more to swallow if that happens...

(And where is the horizontal thumb for those of us who can't decide if they'd buy it or not :) )

Sony?

I have the Sony Picturebook and its still going strong its only P2 400mhz and 64mb ram LOL

Its running windows XP Home

I think Sony should have used a "REAL" cpu for that price.

The centrino branded cpu.wifi setup would have done this nice and you would have been able to use the cpu power for stuff like websurfing. I have found the atom to be very lacking on that side of things.

What really gets me is I had the toshiba nb100 and that took an age to load stuff like a ebay searchers with all the images etc. but would play the Quake 3 demo quite fast. odd?

I do not want to play many games if any but I do want to be able to surf the web without the pages taking an age to load if its bigger than one screen down.

@AC

Moylan

It ISN'T a netbook. Sony have made it quite clear it isn't a netbook, and it is a premium product 'lifestyle laptop'. Granted it's a load of bollocks calling it that, but in fairness to them in relation to your criticism they have gone out their way to emphasise it isn't an SCC netbook.

Which isn't me necessarily justifying that huge price tag let me just make that clear!

Re: Good Video

At last, a useful subnotebook

As people keep saying, this isn't a netbook (Psion or no). It's a subnotebook. This has been the asking price for subnotebooks for a long time, and that fact that there's a recent and welcome fad for producing cheaper subnotebooks with low-end components and calling them netbooks doesn't mean that this one is suddenly over-priced, even if it's surprising to those attracted to the netbook market.

It's got a unique selling point. Apart from being smaller than most netbooks, it's actually got a usefully-sized screen. Yes, it's the wrong aspect ratio for playing most video content (unless you get a 2.35:1 cinema release) - although at least 1280x720 fits on the display, unlike most netbooks - but some of us want to use their laptops for doing work, not playing videos. Multiple adjacent web pages and multiple emacs windows visible would make this very appealing to me (for the same reasons as I have a 2133 Mini-Note, only more so). If, admittedly, I could afford it. I'd make it dual-boot into Linux as soon as I could, though.

That said, I've heard conflicting reports about how fast the processor is, including from some sites that have benchmarked it. Definitely 1.6GHz? (For Linux I don't much mind, but it's nice to know.)